Cthulhu Gonfalon

When an artist copied a famous painting, he’d usually place a grid over the picture and then draw that grid on his on paper. He’d turn a complicated picture into relatively simpler little squares and had ensured that the copy could be as similar as possible. This craft was often called the grid method; some more traditional artists considered it beneath them to try, but pretty much all young people learned it.

As a new-generation artist with a regular family background, Sui Xiong had obviously learned the grid method and had gotten quite proficient with it too. So the moment he got those coordinates, it only took a quick visual sweep of the God’s Kingdom for him to easily find the location they indicated.

To tell the truth, he had no idea what would be there, but he was willing to bet it was something really good.

A master god had absolute control over his followers. If the Master of Mystery wasn’t willing, the God of Art and Culture wouldn’t have had the chance to escape the battlefield. Being able to run all the way to Sui Xiong’s God’s Kingdom’s Shelter and, based on the way she spoke, even being ready to accept Sui Xiong as her master god—which was even less of a possibility. That meant that the Master of Mystery had already abolished the contract and had given back her freedom.

The Master of Mystery clearly meant to give the God of Art and Culture to Sui Xiong through this action, and the reason he was giving up the God of Art and Culture was most likely because of Wall.

Just based on Wall’s clergy, he could be said to be the Master of Mystery’s nemesis. The Master of Mystery mixed “mystery” and “knowledge” into one whole, thus forming his “mystery” clergy, but lately “knowledge” had grown independent and was continually growing on top of that. Sooner or later, as time passed, it would cause his own clergy to crumble.

If the Master of Mystery could obtain Wall as a follower, there’d be no problem avoiding such a situation. But that was already impossible, which was why as he was on the brink of defeat, the first thing he thought of was that he needed to do his utmost in order to please Sui Xiong. Doing so would hopefully prevent Wall from taking action, therefore keeping his clergy from being split apart.

Although this would only be a temporary reprieve, the longer he could stretch that time out, the better.

Letting the God of Art and Culture join the Void Mask God System was done with this goal in mind, and telling the God of Art and Culture those coordinates was, of course, for that same goal.

None of this was particularly complicated; you could figure this out if you just took a little time to think on it. Even if Sui Xiong had never eaten pork before, he’d still seen a pig walk—at the very least, he’d seen a big herd of pigs in the movie Angry Birds—er, that’s going off-topic. In any case, once Sui Xiong guessed what was going on, he made his decision and set off to get the item at those coordinates.

After choosing the second option, he made it look as if he was searching all over the God’s Kingdom. He walked back and forth, passed that location a couple of times without paying attention to it; then he tried exploring more carefully.

The tricks the Master of Mystery used to hide his things were quite fantastic. If Sui Xiong hadn’t known the coordinates beforehand, even if he passed through 100 times, he would never have been able to find it.

But after learning the coordinates and once he began probing the area, Sui Xiong immediately discovered a tiny hidden seal that appeared to have a God’s Kingdom within it.

A sealed God’s Kingdom? That certainly does count as something good, though it’s not as good as I’d have hoped…

By this point, Sui Xiong was no longer the country bumpkin he used to be: he knew exactly how valuable a sealed God’s Kingdom was going to be.

It’s just… back when the War God System fought that losing battle, they’d given him quite a few sealed God’s Kingdoms as war reparations. To this day, he’d only ever used one of them, so he really didn’t care all that much about this thing.

But whatever you might say about it, it was definitely still a valuable object worthy of being picked up.

The third time Sui Xiong had walked over here, he suddenly stopped and muttered, “It looks like something’s hidden here…” Then when he waved a tentacle and pulled out the sealed God’s Kingdom, the God of Heroes stared at him so hard it seemed that his eyes might fall out of his head.

“This… there are still treasures like this around here!?” As he stared dumbstruck at the gem-like God’s Kingdom Sui Xiong was holding, he couldn’t resist swallowing. “This is really… beyond my expectations…”

“Is it okay if I take this?” asked Sui Xiong with a grin.

The God of Heroes hesitated a moment, then let out a heavy sigh.

“Of course it is. If we agree to bet, we must accept to lose. Being able to find valuable objects is your own talent.”

Sui Xiong raised his eyebrows, laughing happily. He didn’t intend to tarry any longer, and so he promptly took his leave. He brought the sealed God’s Kingdom with him back to his own God’s Kingdom’s Shelter. Within the Shelter, he saw the God of Art and Culture, Song Ballard.

This goddess was the same as always, wearing a high-quality yet modestly styled gown, carrying a harp in one hand and a scroll in the other. The Mystery God System’s destruction didn’t appear to have struck much of a blow to her, or at least, she’d already completely regained her calm by now.

“Did you get the thing?” she asked.

Sui Xiong nodded and pulled out the sealed God’s Kingdom.

The God of Art and Culture’s eyes lit up, obviously having realized what this was. She curiously asked, “Which god is this God’s Kingdom from?”

Sui Xiong hadn’t actually checked yet, so he split off a bit of Divine Power and dropped it inside.

The next instant, he was struck speechless.

This wasn’t a “sealed God’s Kingdom” at all!

No… that wasn’t right either; it was still actually a sealed God’s Kingdom, and it currently had the “medicine” clergy sealed within it. But this light ball interior shone like a gem. The most important thing here absolutely wasn’t the “medicine” clergy, but a gigantic hidden treasury!

This was a hidden treasury secretly prepared by the Master of Mystery. Most likely, he’d originally planned to use it to make a comeback after running into unexpected mishaps in the future.

Within this treasury was a huge pile of who knows how many gems, all overflowing with stored Divine Power. If you absorbed them all and had abundant divine support, it could probably make a god ascend to the level of a great Divine Power.

But this was actually the least remarkable thing within the treasury. The real priceless artifacts here were all the sealed god corpses.

There weren’t all that many, just twelve or thirteen altogether, but this was a bunch of real gods’ corpses!

What shocked Sui Xiong most of all was one of the corpses in particular.

Judging by its appearance, this corpse was clearly an elf. He had a slender build, a determined-looking face, and even though he was already dead, there was still a smell remaining on his body that Sui Xiong couldn’t just brush off: there was no doubt he’d had great Divine Power when he was alive.

Sui Xiong didn’t even need to guess to know that this was the body of the Master God of the former Elf God System.

The other corpses were all about the same, with the same unique attributes—slender limbs, pointed ears, hair so bright it seemed to shine…

These were all distinctive characteristics of the Elven Race!

Not just that, but within the treasury were also a few powerful magical objects and a few extremely rare materials. The large majority of them were in the style of the Elven Race’s culture, especially the decorations and designs on the magical objects. They were all identical to a lot of elven historical sites. In which case, this treasury was in all likelihood a spoil of war that the Master of Mystery had collected after wiping out the Elf God System.

In other words, it was the legacy of the former Elf God System.

Thanks to this treasury, even if the Master of Mystery met with an unfortunate end, as long as he was able to resurrect them, Sui Xiong could quickly regain his great Divine Power or even rebuild a god system.

“A present this big is really too generous…” he couldn’t help quietly muttering to himself. “Why would that Master of Mystery… want to give me a present like this?”